China Expats and Culture Blog

The lantern festival 元宵节 (Yuánxiāo jié), also known as the "Yuanxiao festival", is a traditional Chinese festival celebrated on the 15th day of the 1st lunar month, during the first full moon of the year. This year, the lantern festival will start on February 19th, since Chinese New Year started on February 4th.

Chinese New Year, also called Spring Festival, is China’s the most important celebration of the year. All Chinese people come back to their hometown for days in order to gather with their family and enjoy delicious traditional food. In this article, you will learn a lot of new things about the Chinese New Year: what people do, and what they avoid to do, in order to bring luck, happiness, money, health, and success into their life.

Chinese New Year 2019 is coming soon! The year of the pig will start on February 4th and will last 16 days, until February 19th (though most Chinese people will only take a one-week vacation). Lunar New Year is the most important holiday in China. Hundreds of millions of Chinese people go back to their hometown to celebrate it with their family, which makes it the world’s largest annual human migration. Spring Festival is an opportunity for Chinese people to gather with family and friends, give red envelops (with money inside), and wish each other a happy Chinese New Year.

Breakfast (早餐 zǎo cān) is a meal to take seriously in China. China is a huge country, thus, if you have the chance to live or travel there, you will realize that the composition of breakfast dishes has significant differences from one region to another. Through this article, you’ll discover 6 famous and delicious Chinese breakfasts from different regions. (Avoid reading this article if you have not eaten and are hungry!)

If you are in China and want to live an authentic Chinese life with local people, KTV is one of the places to be. Karaoke is a really famous activity among Chinese people, and experiencing it with locals can help you to get closer with them and enjoy parties that are totally different from western culture.

The number of people studying Mandarin is increasing year after year and has already reached 100 million learners in the world, including 60 million overseas Chinese and 40 million foreigners. [Source] In 2017, 489,200 international students were studying in China [Source], and 110,000 in Taiwan [Source].

However, the experience can be quite different depending whether you decide to choose mainland China or Taiwan. If you are still hesitating, here are some things important to know: